ABSTRACT
Concerns over social and environmental unsustainabilities call for seeking ways for realizing change in tourism economies. In this chapter, such transformations are studied in the tourism destination development context. The study combines degrowth literature with poststructural political economy research to build a bottom-up perspective to socio-economic change in tourism production. The chapter is based on an ethnographically oriented case study conducted in the Ylläs tourism destination in the sparsely populated Finnish North in 2015. Research data on everyday tourism realities and economic agency was gathered via semi-structured in-depth interviews with local tourism actors. The empirical study shows how economic difference already exist inside the tourism economy. Tourism actors do not similarly benefit from, take part in, or support the growth of international tourist flows and new tourism construction. Diversity exists even inside the growth discourse and the term does not mean the same things for every actor. Power hierarchies in the destination community maintain the growth-oriented destination development. Thus, in degrowth transitions, some forms of tourism need to be supported while others need to degrow. To conclude, degrowth transition can also be advanced by incremental changes from below, not only in official political structures.
